


The Grove

by onawingandaswear



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Afterlife, Character Death, Eggsy's chosen method of honoring Harry actually prolongs his grieving process, Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Life's a Beech, M/M, Moving On, Not A Fix-It, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, Trees, bio-urn, references to past Lancelot/Percival, stealing ashes not digging up bodies, still kinda fluffy in a sad way, talking about death, understanding Kingsman, unorthodox burial methods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:34:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6874510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onawingandaswear/pseuds/onawingandaswear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an effort to overcome his grief, Eggsy does something illegal and accidentally starts a new Kingsman tradition in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Grove

There’s a portrait of Harry in the briefing room; a grand, classic looking thing done up in rich oils and warm tones. The shining brass placard just below the frame reads ‘Galahad IV: 1987 — 2015’. and it bothers Eggsy to no end that like every other portrait of a fallen Kingsman, Harry is known only by his designate.

 _Birth. Marriage. Death._ Harry deserved better.

Merlin catches him staring at the portrait after a debriefing months down the line and Eggsy doesn’t have the energy to be embarrassed. Instead he pushes his water glass a few inches away from him with his pointer finger, giving Merlin a moment to jump to conclusions. He refuses to eat or drink anything in the briefing room, not after Arthur’s heavy handed attempt at homicide.

“It’s disrespectful,” he tells the Spymaster. “New agents come in here and never know the names of the Knights that came before them.”

“It’s tradition.” Merlin assuages, with the careful measure of a man who knows he will have this conversation many times over; likely again with Eggsy. “When your time comes, your portrait will go up beside Harry’s.” 

The words don’t soothe his irritation, but in a sick way he is comforted by the idea that they’ll be together in one fashion or another.

“So I’ll just be another Galahad to be forgotten in a dusty old room, then?” He snarks, pushing up from his seat. “Birth, marriage, death, and then gone from the world as if I never existed.” Merlin drops the file in his hands onto the conference table. When Eggsy lifts his head to meet the man’s gaze, he doesn’t find anger, but resignation.

“You’ll never marry.” Merlin tells him. “Not as long as you court a dead man. You want them to know Harry Hart? Then tell them. Keep his memory alive, but as with every Kingman that has come before you, you carry a legacy.” Merlin looks to Harry’s portrait and motions for Eggsy to do the same. “ _His_ legacy. Harry was my friend. He was your mentor, and now he’s gone. The way I see it, you can be the man he hoped you might become or you can tear down what little of his world still remains.”

“His world killed him.” Eggsy reminds Merlin, but the man just looks at him with something so akin to pity that Eggsy can barely stand it.

“Harry Hart was a Kingsman.” Merlin presses. “As are you. Never forget him, and never forget that one day his world will kill you as well.”

 

_____

 

The first time Eggsy is offered the position of Galahad, he refuses. It’s less than four weeks after they’ve stopped the end of the world, and part of him still wants to believe that the real Galahad is mucking about the Americas, waiting to make a grand, James Bond-esque reappearance.

Trouble is, as the days pass, Harry is never waiting for him in the study — boasting sick scars and an eyepatch. Nor does Eggsy return from a mission to find Harry sitting at the head of the table as their newest Arthur.No, that title goes to the now former Ector, a jovial man on the wrong side of 50 whom, with any luck, will end up as round as JB now that he’s out of the field.

Eggsy doesn’t ever really lose the faith, not even when they send him on special assignment to retrieve Harry’s remains: what amounts to a smattering of grey ash in a steel can.

“I know you’re in there,” he tells the container somewhere over the Canary Islands. “But we’re going to just pretend you aren’t, right Harry? A secret just between you and me.”

He’ll get Harry a proper urn, something fitting of the Kingsman he is, and Harry will go up beside Mr. Pickles in Eggsy’s home office. It’s a good plan, a solid plan; at least until Merlin tells Eggsy the ashes are going to Harry’s next of kin, a woman who is decidedly not Eggsy Unwin.

____

 

Eggsy didn’t know Harry had a sister. Eggsy didn’t know a lot of things.

 

_____

 

He knows he’s desecrating Harry’s remains. Logically, yes, it’s incredibly improper and very likely illegal to swap the man’s ashes with a mixture of blackened wood ash and sand. Emotionally? Well, whatever argument he eventually comes up with won’t stand up to an intense line of questioning, so Eggsy’s not going to think too hard about it now.

He remembers a bit about Beech trees from primary — mostly how important they are to local species of butterflies — and he thinks about Harry’s house, of the walls lined with jewel-toned wings. He hopes this isn’t a mistake.

 

_____

 

He buries Harry on the Kingsman grounds, far enough from the tree line to not be lost in the foliage, but close enough that a sapling won’t be trampled by careless feet or trimmed by an unthinking groundskeeper.

A few weeks later, when a tiny sprout has poked through the topsoil to unfurl even smaller green leaves, Lancelot will find Galahad crying over a nothing little plant. He tells her the truth, because how can he not? He stole Harry’s ashes and planted the man in a biodegradable urn. He deserves a reprimand at the very least, but Roxy just gets down on her knees beside Eggsy and watches the sprout’s leaves twitch in the summer breeze.

_____

 

Word spreads quickly about ‘Galahad’s Tree’, and while no one says anything outright, the groundskeepers stop trimming so close to the growing sapling. Not long after, when Eggsy’s sporting a bruised collarbone from his last mission and trying desperately to figure out the best way to trim back a rogue branch that may or may not actually be the trunk, he finds Lancelot and Percival striding across the green while Merlin and Arthur bring up the rear.

Then Eggsy notices the shovel in Roxy’s hands.

“You ain’t digging him up.” Eggsy says shortly, failing to keep panic from creeping into his voice. “He’s already to my knee.” When Eggsy has pulled himself up and brushed the loose soil from his trousers, he can make out what Percival is holding: a plant urn, just like Harry’s. Merlin looks past Eggsy, to the sapling, and smiles sadly.

Arthur hums in agreement. “No one’s digging up Harry Hart, my boy. Not on my watch.” He motions to Percival, who holds up the urn like a peace offering.

“Lancelot… _James_ , loved Maples.” Percival explains. “If I knew him at all, he’d rather live on as something beautiful rather than collect dust on my mantle.”

Something clicks in his brain, and were Eggsy firing on all cylinders, he’d be mildly ashamed he’d missed that Percival and Lancelot were _Percival and Lancelot_. Roxy gives Eggsy a small smile and gestures beside the sapling with the shovel. “If it’s alright with you, maybe we could plant a friend for Harry?”

Eggsy doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. Arthur says a few words, Percival looks close to tears, and Merlin pulls him aside while the men commiserate over another fallen agent, one Eggsy never got the chance to know.

“He’d be so proud of you.” Merlin says gently.

“I just wish he was here to tell me that himself.” Eggsy counters, his voice just as soft, as respectful, if tinged with a hint of regret.

“Harry is here.” Merlin tells him, gesturing to the sapling. “You stole his ashes, dug up ancestral manor grounds and planted him in spitting distance of his second home. He’d have loved that, and the fact he’s growing at all means you’ve done him proud.”

“It’s a tree.” Eggsy corrects, the words catching in his suddenly tight throat. “Just a stupid _tree_.”

Merlin gives him a look, something that hovers between sympathetic and disbelieving. “You and I both know that is our Harry.” He nods toward the patch of overturned soil that will soon cover the former Lancelot’s ashes. “And that is our James.”

Eggsy can’t find his voice and Merlin is enough of a gentleman that he doesn’t make Eggsy feel more embarrassed than he already is.

“When you’re done here,” Merlin says, “the groundskeeper wants to be briefed on our new garden. May be worth your time to have a bit of help when you’re on assignment.” Eggsy just nods his affirmation.

In the end, they plant James a few meters to the side, far enough away that his and Harry’s trees won’t grow into one another at full size or deplete the nutrients in the soil.

“This is a really great idea you’ve had, Eggsy.” She tells him while Percival finishes patting down the topsoil on James’ Maple urn himself. Somehow watching Percival bury his lover makes Eggsy want to agree; who knew stealing human remains could lead to something good?

_____

 

Stealing human remains also leads to something bad.

He does eventually get reprimanded, formally, and he has to travel to Kent to apologize to Harry’s sister Elizabeth for stealing her brother’s ashes. The woman is understandably perturbed, but also has made a false assumption that Harry and Eggsy knew each other in an intimate fashion, tempering her distress accordingly.

“You really think a doctor wouldn’t know human remains from silt?” She asks him incredulously after he explains how Harry in now a thriving little tree in the woods several kilometers north of London. “Do you at least have a picture?”

He does have a photo. He has several, in fact, and Elizabeth smiles approvingly at Eggsy’s work.

“It’s fitting you chose a beech,” she tells him as he’s preparing to leave. “When Harry was six, he fell out of one and knocked out a tooth. I just remember him bleeding and lisping and trying to swear revenge on that damn tree. Tried to get father to chop it down entirely.” Eggsy must look horrified because Elizabeth laughs outright and pats his cheek softly. “Don’t worry. They made up. If anyone had to turn my brother into a tree, I’m happy it was a handsome young man like yourself.”

_____

 

Nathaniel ‘Gawain’ Bryant dies on assignment stopping an assassination attempt on the newly elected Prime Minister.

Little over a month later a tiny wisp of a green sprout appears on the grounds. The beginnings of what will soon be an Ash tree, this time, flanking Harry’s metre-tall, whipcord-thin Beech.

There isn’t really a ceremony of any sort, but Eggsy knows that every agent has visited the new tree to help water or sprinkle some fertilizer. The groundskeepers now tend the tiny grove with a sort of reverence, but Eggsy finds no comfort in the way the Gawain candidates refer to the trees as ‘The Graveyard’.

If he and Roxy make a point to take their lunch beside the trees during a training exercise, well it’s their own bloody business and no one else’s.

____

 

During their weekly conference, Tristan places an item on the agenda.

“I’d like to propose officially naming the tree garden.”

While everyone throws in their own suggestions, it is somewhat humbling when the knights all turn to Eggsy for final approval. “Well?” Arthur asks him. “While it is a communal garden of sorts, it is also a graveyard and must be respected accordingly. You are it’s founder.”

‘Kingsman Grove’ is tossed around a few times, and as it seems the least abrasive of titles, Eggsy gives his own seal of approval.

Tristan is overly delighted by the decision, slapping his palm on the table with a grin. “Gentleman, I will be a Juniper when my time comes, and should I return to this plane I will be incredibly displeased if my berries have not been crafted into a lovely gin.”

“Ah, well congratulations for breaking the deciduous theme, Tristan, opting for a _bush_.” Percival openly scoffs at the notion, and Roxy has a difficult time hiding her smile behind a hand.

It shouldn’t be humorous, discussing their inevitable ends in this manner, but Bors actually begins taking down notes.

“Can we sustain non-traditional fruit trees in this climate? Nothing too exotic, I’d presume.” Caradoc asks with genuine curiosity. “I’d not want to be a bother for the groundskeepers.”

“Galahad.” Arthur intones lowly amid the debate. “I think I’d very much enjoy becoming a chestnut tree, should certain events come to pass.”

“Of course, Arthur.” Eggsy answers softly, not wanting to disturb the rather spirited cross table exchange.

“And what, may I ask, would you like to be?” Arthur continues, his dark eyes glinting with reserved interest. Eggsy’s stomach turns slightly at the unwelcome memory of his last conversation with Chester King.

“You know the last Arthur that asked me about death didn’t last too long, Sir.” He bites out, not quite able to tamp down the misplaced anger he feels. It’s not quite fair to any of them that Eggsy still feels the way he does, but if anyone understands, it is the man beside him now, leading them in the wake of Eggsy’s personal apocalypse.

The man raises his hands in supplication and smiles wryly. “Neither the time nor the place, Eggsy. My apologies.”

“Sorry, Sir.” Eggsy mumbles, feeling like an utter shit.

“Don’t apologize. But when you’re ready we should all have our wishes on file.”

Eggsy doesn’t ever actually put his choice down on paper. He never formally announces what he would like to become at the end of his life, but he does begin collecting a few of the errant seeds Harry drops every spring.

______

 

Arthur falls ill some eight years after taking the office. Hereditary congenital heart failure, and it was sheer luck he was pulled out of the field when he was. It falls to Eggsy to make sure the groundskeepers cultivate the soil well enough to get the Chestnut sapling through it’s first winter.

The same year Bors retires to spend time with his family.

This is news to Eggsy, now thirty-six and unable to think of doing — of being — anything other than a Kingsman agent. Sure, he dates, he lives, he’s a well rounded gentleman with a penchant for informal rugby matches and well-groomed men; but it’s quite a shock, really, he’d never considered stepping down, retiring, he always just assumed he’d die before it became an option. Like Harry. Like Lancelot. Like Arthur and Gawain and all the others they’d lost.

“Of course you can retire.” Merlin chides him, the lines in his face belying years of his own reluctance to do just that. “I would myself if you all weren’t so helpless without me.”

Somehow retirement is still not an option. He can't imagine ever being content enough to step away from this life, to hunker down with a partner and waste away while the world needs saving. It's not that Eggsy has a deathwish, it's just...wrong, somehow.

"A blaze of glory." Percival tells him solemnly one evening in the commissary. "That is how James left this world, and I owe it to myself to honor his memory by doing the same."

Eggsy understands.

He wishes he didn't. 

______

 

If an aging Dagonet sews a single Beech seed into the lining of every suit Galahad owns, no one really needs to know. 

 

______

 

Eggsy is thirty-eight and no one calls him Eggsy anymore. He goes by Gary, informally, though he prefers to be called Galahad. There’s something comforting about both of his names reminding him of Harry Hart. His memories of the man are faded, like a sun-stained photograph, but they linger on in the back of his mind.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

There are a half-dozen trees in the Grove now. Poor Harry’s Beech is half the size of James’ Maple, and both are absolutely dwarfed by Nathaniel’s towering Ash. 

Recruits make assumptions about his regular visits to the Grove, whispers about how one of the fallen was Galahad's lover. Merlin stops correcting them, and eventually so does Gary. At some point his affection became obsession, and now it's just an accepted fact. The sky is blue. Grass is green. Galahad will forever mourn a lost love. 

_____

 

_“Lancelot, I’m pinned down—“_

Galahad is forty-one and his luck has run out.

The suits only stop so much, and when he hears the thunder-crack of a high caliber rifle, he knows he can’t wait out a firefight.

“Merlin, they’ve got a Beowulf.”

_“Your kevlar won’t hold against .50 caliber rounds, can you move to your extraction point?”_

“Working on it.”

Galahad hangs a left out of the corridor and makes for the stairwell, but blinding pain whites out his vision as a round tears through the meat of his thigh, and he goes down hard.

“Merlin,” he bites, still seeing stars. “I’m hit.”

_“Can you make it to the extraction point?”_

He tries to stand only to collapse under his own weight, unable to put any pressure on his left leg. He can’t walk, but he can crawl, which he does shamelessly into a nearby supply room. He tries to barricade the door, but being unable to walk, let alone stand, makes his efforts laughable. Then he notices exactly how much he’s bleeding.

“N-negative,” he breathes, the pain catching up to him. “I’m in a damn closet on the third floor, f-facing east.”

_“ETA on Lancelot is ten minutes.”_

He pulls the tie from his neck — hand stitched Italian silk — and ties the length of fabric _tight_ around the joint of his upper thigh in a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding. There’s a pounding on the door after someone tries the handle, and Galahad chambers a round while thanking whatever architect encouraged the builders to install ‘aesthetically pleasing’ steel doors.

“Best figure how to make that five, luv’, I’m loosing a lot of blood here — may have nicked an artery.”

 _“I’m nearly there.”_ He catches Lancelot announce over the comm.

He’s not stupid. Even if Roxy can get here, he can’t walk. If he doesn’t die from the blood loss, he may very well lose his leg if the tourniquet does what it’s intended to. All of this is secondary to the fact there are at least six well armed men trying to get to him before Roxy.

_“Galahad you need to hold on—“_

He’s suddenly drowsy, vision going loose and shaky. There’s more shouting, gunshots, and he’s having a hell of a time focusing on simply not passing out. He hears a distant clatter and realizes he’s dropped his gun. His leg doesn’t hurt much anymore.

“Merl’n?” he tries, gathering what little energy he has left.

 _“Eggsy?”_ the man replies, and damn if that isn’t the most comforting thing he could hear right now. He presses a weak hand to his lapel, over one of Harry’s seeds.

“Beech.” Eggsy forces out, desperately seeking Roxy’s voice. “Beech.” he repeats, and he closes his eyes, resting for just a moment...just a moment to clear his head.  _Harry._ He thinks, embracing the blissful calm that comes with slipping into unconsciousness.

.

..

...

_I’m going to see Harry._

 

_____

 

Galahad V dies on a Tuesday in April. It takes a month for the official portrait to go up. Another three for the small Beech sapling beside Galahad IV’s grave to make something of itself.

Merlin retires after they lose Eggsy. He’s lost one too many and Roxy can’t blame him, but the world doesn’t stop. Kingsman moves on, appoints a new Galahad, a young woman with half of Eggsy’s humor but all of his potential.

As the years pass, she watches Eggsy’s Beech grow steadily higher, branches curling and thriving despite the shade thrown by his larger counterpart. Over time, she stops feeling melancholy. Agents pass on, new trees are planted, and almost overnight Harry and Eggsy aren’t the most tragic of Kingsman’s losses. Maybe they never were to begin with.

Besides, Roxy can’t really make herself feel bad for Eggsy, not when he gets to spend his afterlife with the man he loved. It's as happy an ending as any of them will get. She just hopes one day her own memorial grows as steadfastly as his.

"Yew," she tells Galahad, who has joined her in overseeing their latest training exercise. "English Yew. You can make me a survival test."

 

**Author's Note:**

> First fic in a year! Thanks to Sfumatosoups for pushing me to post this. Love you bby.


End file.
